The Last Victim (34 page)

What her body didn’t do was melt or burn. No fireworks went off against her closed lids. Her world did not rock. All her preconceptions about herself and men did not shatter.

But still, it was a very nice kiss.

When he lifted his head, though, Charlie was annoyed to discover she was feeling a tad cranky.

“So what was that about?” she asked, striving to keep the crankiness out of her tone.

She thought he was studying her face, but again, it was too dark to really be sure. “I wanted to get it out of the way.”

Okay, cranky was definitely happening. Nothing she could do. “Oh, goody. I like your motivation. You want to tell me
why
you wanted to get it out of the way?” She pulled free and started walking again.

He laughed, and caught up. “You came to us on a temporary basis. I want to make it permanent.”

Whatever she had been expecting, that was not it. “What?”

“I’m offering you a job. Come be a permanent part of our team. Between the psychological insights and the psychic stuff, you’re unique. You’ll give us a weapon in this war against the monsters out there that we’ve never had before.”

Charlie frowned at him. “Which means you kissed me because …?”

“I wanted to, and I don’t kiss people I work with. If you accept the job, and I’m hoping you will, our relationship is strictly professional from here on out.”

“That’s certainly an incentive.” She couldn’t quite keep the tartness out of her voice.

He grinned. “Ouch.” Then his tone turned serious. “This is life-and-death work we’re doing, Charlie. You could be a vital part of it.”

They had almost reached the house. Through the gentle veil of the screening on the porch, Charlie could see Kaminsky standing in the lighted doorway holding a pizza box. The red-shirted delivery guy was just leaving. She watched him walk around the side of the house until the RV blocked him from her view.

“You three are based out of Quantico, right? I’d have to relocate.” Charlie thought of her house in the mountains.

“You’d probably find it more convenient.”

“And I’d have to give up my research.”

“On the upside, you’d help catch a lot of bad guys. Which would save a lot of lives.”

That was something, she had to admit. “I have to think about it,” she said, and he nodded.

They walked inside in time to hear Kaminsky say, “When a person
dies, it’s like they just drop their bodies. Then they step into a new one.”

“When a person
dies
,” Crane replied, sounding like he was talking through his teeth and making Charlie think the discussion had been going on for some time, “they enter into eternal rest. Until Judgment Day.”

“You are so—” Kaminsky began witheringly, only to break off as she spotted Charlie and Tony.
“Pizza,”
she said to them in a different, brighter tone.

Charlie shook her head. “Thanks, but I think I’ll just go on up to bed.”

Tony followed her to the foot of the stairs. “Let me know, okay?”

Looking past him to where Kaminsky and Crane were both regarding them with identical speculative looks, Charlie gave him a wry smile. “I will.”

Then she went upstairs. As soon as she stepped through the door to her darkened apartment, she noticed two things: the TV was on, although she had left it turned off, and Garland was there, big as life and looking just as substantial, standing in the doorway between the living room and the bedroom. As she closed and locked the door behind her, he propped one broad shoulder against the wall and folded his arms over his chest.

From the straight set of his mouth and the glint in his eyes, Charlie realized that she was looking at one pissy ghost.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Charlie’s immediate thought was that Garland must have witnessed Tony’s kiss, and not liked what he had seen. That straightened her spine and made her pissy, too. She didn’t owe him any explanations, and he had absolutely no right to object to anything she chose to do.

No right to spy on her, either.

She wanted, badly, to blast him for it. What stopped her was the fact that she was not one hundred percent sure he had seen her kissing Tony, and that kissing in general was not a subject she wanted to discuss with him at the moment.

The knowledge that what had happened between them last night hadn’t been a dream was still fresh enough to make her squirm.

“If you’ll get out of my way, I’m going to bed” is what she said. Her tone was icy. She had a feeling her eyes were hostile, but it was dark except for the bluish light emanating from the TV, which meant he probably couldn’t tell.

He straightened, and stepped out of the hallway into the living room so that she could walk past him.

She did, ignoring him ostentatiously. Of course he followed her.

She whipped around, pointed a finger at him. “Stop right there.”

He stopped. He was still in the hall. She was at the threshold of
the bedroom. The room behind her was as dark as a cave. Because of the light behind him, he was a tall, broad-shouldered, should-have-been-intimidating silhouette.

Only she wasn’t intimidated one bit.

“For the rest of the time you’re here, the bedroom is off-limits,” she informed him tightly. “The bathroom, too. They’re mine. You can use the living room.”

“Ain’t that a treat.” His low voice had a growly quality. “You owe me some ju-ju, Doc.”

She knew what he was talking about: something to keep him here.

“I don’t owe you anything. I told you I’d try, and I did. If the sea salt didn’t work, you’re shit out of luck.” Turning her back on him, she marched into the bedroom and turned on the bedside lamp. As soon as her eyes landed on the bed, still rumpled from the restless night she had passed, she realized that heading to the bedroom had probably been a mistake, because it instantly brought to mind last night’s dream-that-wasn’t.

“Does kissing somebody always make you this bitchy?”

She whipped around again, bristling with temper. He was standing inside her bedroom looking like he was spoiling for a fight. His eyes were narrowed, his face hard, and dark energy rolled off him in waves.

The problem with having this particular fight was that she wasn’t completely sure which kiss he was referring to, the one she had shared with Tony or the one—all right, many—she had shared with him. Come to think of it, though, it didn’t really matter. She didn’t want to talk about any of them.

“Get out of my bedroom,” she snapped. “Right now.”

He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. In fact, there was a time when she would have said it was downright dangerous.

Now it just made her mad.

“Make me,” he said, and because she knew she couldn’t, except by using the sage and the candle and she wasn’t going to try that again even if she could get it set up and get him in position for it, which she knew wasn’t going to happen ever again in this eternity, she picked up a pillow from her bed and heaved it at him.

The thing about it was she was a dead shot. She hit him smack in
the chest. And it went right through him, to land on the floor behind him.

He gave her a taunting look. It made her so mad she threw the second pillow at him, with the same result.

He laughed. Then he said, very softly, “Maybe you ought to try calling
Tony
for help,” and she knew he had indeed seen the kiss.

The look she shot him should have singed his eyeballs. “You have no business spying on me.”

“I was keeping an eye on you. Because it doesn’t suit my plans for you to get your pretty throat slit. Who knew you and your boyfriend would start going at it out there in the dark? Next time, give me a heads-up, and I’ll make myself scarce.”

“You won’t be around next time. Because in about three days or less, you’ll be gone.
Poof
. Bye-bye.” She said that last with defiant relish and a little wave.

His eyes narrowed. His voice mocked. “Didn’t look like
Tony
turned you on all that much. Want me to give him some pointers?”

Charlie could feel her face starting to heat.

“Go to hell,” she snarled.

He smiled at her. “Not if I can help it.”

Then he turned and walked out of the bedroom. Past fury, she hurled the last remaining pillow, a round decorative one, after him. It bounced off the hall wall.

From somewhere in the vicinity of the living room, he laughed.

Seething, Charlie took a shower and went to bed. The shower was an awkward affair, because the last thing she wanted was to be caught naked by him, and she certainly wouldn’t put it past the rat bastard to pop up at the most embarrassing possible moment. She had to maneuver with towels, her robe, etc., so that she was nude for as brief a period as possible. Then she practically yanked a nightgown over her head and jumped into bed. In the end, of course, probably simply because she was prepared for him not to, he left her alone.

Turning off the lamp, she settled down onto the pillows she had been infuriatingly forced to retrieve and closed her eyes. Her emotions were in so much turmoil that she was afraid she would lie awake for hours. It didn’t help that she could hear the TV, which since she
now associated the sound with Garland meant it was impossible to banish him from the forefront of her mind.

If last night wasn’t a dream, what was it?

She decided she didn’t want to know. In fact, she was too tired to think about it. Just like she was too tired to think about Tony, or Bayley Evans, or ways to find the monster who had murdered those three girls. She was too tired to think, period.

She had barely closed her eyes when she fell fathoms deep asleep.

Her dreams were a jumble of terrifying images. Charlie found herself looking down at Bayley Evans’ body on the gurney again, in all its horrific detail. Only, in her dream, the girl’s eyes suddenly popped open and she started to scream, soundlessly because her vocal cords had been cut along with her throat.

No
 …

Charlie’s own eyes popped open, to nothing but a whole lot of dark. She was, she discovered, as she lay there trying to make sense of where she was, gasping for breath and making soft whimpering sounds. Thrashing around in her bed in the FBI’s rented beach house, mourning a dead girl. A dead girl she hadn’t been able to save.

Dear God, I can’t do this
.

“You’re safe, Doc. I’m right here.” That voice, coming to her out of the dark, instantly shut her up. It froze her in place, widened her eyes, and then practically gave her whiplash as she snapped a look in the direction from which it had come.

Garland crouched by the side of the bed. She couldn’t really see much more than his outline and the gleam of his eyes: it was too dark. But she knew without a doubt that it was him.

Her heart, which the dream had set pounding, slowed. Her too-fast breathing steadied. The tension in her muscles eased.

The ridiculous, horrible, impossible-to-process thing about it was, having him there actually made her feel safe.

His hand rested on the bed near her shoulder. She could see the dark shape of it against the white sheet. Just to make sure, just to test whether this was a dream or real or, third alternative, whatever the previous night had been, she put her hand on his.

It sank right through to the sheet, leaving her to experience no
more of him than an electric tingle. No warm flesh or solid muscle and bone. Nothing substantial at all.

Her ghost remained a ghost.

He yanked his hand away.

“What was that?” He sounded wary.

“I’m awake, and this is real,” Charlie said, although not with complete conviction.

“Yes to both.”

Charlie rallied enough to frown at him. “So what are you doing in my bedroom? What part of
off-limits
didn’t you get?”

“The noise you were making was interfering with my enjoyment of
Sports Center
. I came in to shut you up.”

She was immediately self-conscious. “I was having a nightmare.”

“I know. Just like you did last night. I came in to shut you up then, too.”

Charlie sighed and bit. It was bugging her to death, and she had to know. What was more, he knew it. If this was reality and in this reality he was nothing more than magnetic energy to the touch, and if her dreams, where she could have imagined he was a living man, were hers alone, which meant that he shouldn’t have had the first clue what went on in them, then what, exactly, had last night been? Embarrassing and infuriating and unsettling as having this conversation was sure to be, she needed to have it for her own peace of mind.

“So you want to explain last night to me?” If her question was slightly gruff, it was because she still really didn’t want to go where this conversation would lead.

She could just barely see his slow, curling smile. “Short answer is, looks like I’m your dream man, Doc.”

If hitting him with her pillow could do any good, she would have done it. As it was, she went with what was practically her only option: ignoring it. “I’m serious. What happened last night?”

His smile widened into a wicked grin. “Well, let’s see: we danced, and we made out, and we got each other hot, and then you—”

“You know what I mean,” she snapped, before he could get to the part where she had started stripping.

He said nothing for a moment, and she wasn’t sure he was going
to answer. Hitching herself up on the pillows, she folded her arms over her chest and glared at him.

“Garland. Stop being a jackass, and tell me how you ended up in my dream.”

“Try calling me Michael,” he suggested. “And I wouldn’t say no to a
please
.”

Remembering the circumstances under which she had called him by his first name made her heart beat faster. It was all she could do to keep her breathing from quickening.

She could feel him waiting.

“Michael.” She said it reluctantly, and thought she saw a flicker of something in his eyes. Despite her best efforts, she felt her blood begin to heat. The next word was several degrees less difficult: “Please.”

He smiled at her, slow and almost sweet. “Now, how hard was that?” He then eased into a sitting position on the floor beside the bed, with his back against the wall and an arm on his bent knee. Her eyes had adjusted enough to the gloom so that she could actually see him a little now. They were at right angles to each other, close enough that she caught what looked like a quick, wry smile. “Since in my present state climbing into bed with you and making us both feel real good isn’t looking like it’s an option, I guess talking’s all there is to do.” Charlie was just drawing a breath at the image this planted in her brain when he added, “Like I said, you had a nightmare last night. I got through your salt barrier—went right out through the ceiling—and came in to see what was up. There was this girl in your room. Dead girl—see, I recognize the type right off now.” Humor just touched his voice. “You were asleep, but you seemed real agitated, tossing and turning and moaning. I was just coming around the corner of the bed, trying to get between you and the girl in case she had bad intentions or something, when she saw me and started to turn away. Then—here’s the good part, Doc—you rose right up and tried to go after her. Not your body—it stayed where it was, in this bed. But
you
. Your spirit, I guess, if that’s what you want to call it. You went flying after that girl, who vanished right out through the wall. And if I hadn’t caught you around the waist and hung on, you would have gone after her. But I did catch you, and it was the damnedest
thing. We were both the same, both as solid and alive as you are now and I used to be. I could hold you, Doc, and feel you. It surprised the hell out of me, let me tell you. So I grabbed on tight, and then we got whisked back to that dance where we were earlier, and I figured that must be where you were in your dream. Only me grabbing on to you took me with you.” His brow furrowed. “You got any explanation for any of that?”